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Sunday, August 5, 2012

Yesterday Was Terrifying...

So I had a post ready to write yesterday, but never got around to it. Instead, I spent almost 4 hours on the road after receiving a very scary phone call from my sister.

I spent a week and a half at a cottage with my family in Rice Lake, Ontario, but came home late Wednesday night because I was just getting too hot and tired to stick it out until Saturday. My son wanted to stay with his cousin and grandparents, so we left him with my parents. Yesterday they were scheduled to come home, and I was to meet them at my parents' house at around noon.

I slept in (if you consider 8 am sleeping in!) and didn't really get going until around 9:30, when I started deciding what I could get done before picking up my son. I'm at 37 weeks in my pregnancy now, so technically the baby could be born anyday, so I figured that getting baby stuff done would be a good idea. I started getting my hospital bag list together, and my husband was going to put the new car seat in the car for the baby. I also wanted to menu plan and get my post together.

Instead, I got a phone call from my sister telling me that they had been in a car accident.

I think my heart stopped.

Since they were taking two cars, one with my parents in it and one with my sister and the two kids (her 4 year old daughter and my 3 year old son), I initially thought that they had hit each other. Turns out I was wrong- someone rear-ended my sister's car with the kids in the backseat after failing to notice that the car had come to a complete stop.

It took a minute for it to sink in; my son had been in an accident. And I was almost 2 hours away.

My sister was trying to stay calm for my sake, but I could tell she was shaken. The first thing she said was "The kids are OK, but they're scared." I was scared too. Turns out the kids were very lucky. The entire back of the car was destroyed. The bumper came completely off the car, and the trunk was smashed in. This is one time that having a trunk full of stuff came in handy- it absorbed some of the shock and stopped the entire trunk from pushing into the back seat, or the back windshield from shattering.

EMS checked everybody out and announced that everyone was fine, but as a mother, I wasn't buying it until I saw my son for myself. My dad went with the tow-truck and the car, and my mom, sister and the kids waited under a tree at the side of the road for my husband and I to arrive. The unharmed car had a back seat full of cottage stuff, so there was no room to put the kids' car seats and they needed us to go and get them. My husband and I were out of the house within 5 minutes.

If you live outside of Ontario, you may not know that it's a long weekend here, so traffic out of the city was horrendous. It took over 2 hours to get to where my family was waiting, and I spent the whole time trying to stay calm and not stress myself into labour! It didn't really matter that I knew that my son wasn't hurt, all I wanted to do was see him for myself and grab him up in a huge hug.

When we arrived, both my son and my niece came running, and I felt the stress leave my body. The family in the house across the street had brought over food and water for everyone, and had offered to let them wait in their house. The kids wanted to stay outside, but weren't going to turn down the freezies! The kids launched into an explanation of what happened, with my son repeating that he was very angry that someone had broken their car!

The ride home was much quicker, going against the traffic, but by the time we got home it was after 2 pm., more than 4 hours after we left in the morning. Everyone was tired, hot and starving, but safe and sound.

Needless to say, the blog post never got finished, and we spent the rest of the day just enjoying our family time together. I've never been so grateful to sit back and watch my son make noise, or to kiss him goodnight. I guess it's true when people say to appreciate every moment- you just never know.